The fact that DDG is grossly inferior to Google is a pretty strong incentive.

It’s worse but Google has closed the gap a lot over the last few years as they remove anything which advertisers aren’t asking for. I periodically tried DDG for years and always switched back but about a year ago I didn’t. I still use Google a few times a week but it’s increasingly for more obscure technical things and DDG is often winning those due to not having removed their advanced search operators.

Barring C-level change at Google I’m expecting the gap to disappear in a year or two.

Could this be because Google doesn't have to compete?

My impression is that Google Search is worse now than it was in the past. They've gotten complacent. So if they had to fight for users instead of taking them for granted through paying off Apple and Mozilla, then maybe Google would have to perform better. Everyone wins? (Except AAPL stockholders.)

I think much of the apparent deterioration of Google Search is because high-quality information is disappearing from the web. Google can't return results that don't exist.

If you Google '$PRODUCT review' and only get Amazon-affiliate scam sites pretending to be review sites, it's not because Google has been SEOed but rather because there are no actual reviews of $PRODUCT.

Aside from a botched update last year, where Google would only return results that were selling things, Google Search is still very good at finding information that exists.

Google could downrank websites with affiliate links, since those are ads stuffing organic results. But they choose not to.

Many of the only high quality review sites left (like Wirecutter) are partially monetized with referral links. I don't think this would be a good approach.

It's not partially, it is almost solely. And yes that creates conflict of interest, same one search engines have when they display ads.

When looking at a web page you nowadays have to wonder 'what is the purpose of this page?'. Unfortunately even sites like wirecutter exist more and more to drive revenue, rather than inform the user. The only types of pages where purpose is still non-commercial (in most cases) are discussions.

Did you say « Authentic reviews don’t exist »? Or did you say « Google doesn’t show us any authentic reviews, therefore they don’t exist »?

It is the pointer to monopolistic behavior: Being so influent that nothing exists outside the Google Search. We can’t affirm honest reviews don’t exist: I’m sure there are authentic comparators, in fact in France UFC Que Choisir is a pretty leftist comparison organization who explores products, compares them and even regularly sends companies to trial, a pretty good sign that they couldn’t care less for those companies in a way that is awesomely aligned with authenticity. I’m sure there are millions of other people writing reviews for pleasure.

Google chose not to show them, and to orient their search in the way they wanted, whatever it is, maybe they’re showing corporate sites first, or commercial sites first, making it impossible for amateurs to exist, making them « don’t exist ». It turns out it makes you feel like nothing is authentic. Therefore we turn back to Amazon or Google and buy any of the list, just trusting the biggest vendor. This probably innocuous wording of yours may be the key to the whole problem here.

My assumption is that authentic reviews don't exist, at least on the English-speaking web, to the extent that they did 10-20 years ago. Google doesn't find authentic reviews in most areas, but neither does DDG or Bing.

Google and DDG, however, are very good at finding authentic reviews in niche market segments where authentic reviews are still common. The fact that search engines can find these reviews suggests that the lack of authentic reviews for mainstream products is much more due to a lack of authentic reviews on the web rather than a problem with search engines.

I think it's less complacent than milking it: as long as they have such high market-share they can prioritize things which generate more profit for them until the point where users switch en masse. The risk, of course, is that someone like Bing or DDG will improve and they'll find less loyalty than they used to have but I'm sure they expect to be able to pivot back faster than people will bail.

Yeah I just switched away from a bunch of Google services in the wake of Google music going away, and I'm surprised by how good DDG results are now

I think any inferiority is mainly because DDG doesn't build a user profile. I tested this the other day by searching for 'rust'. On Google the entire first page of results were either about the programming language or some game. DDG had something about iron oxide as the third result.

Whenever I use DDG, I just have to remember that DDG does not have my personal profile, and adjust accordingly. Then the results are fine, and even better if I'm searching outside my normal profile.

> I think any inferiority is mainly because DDG doesn't build a user profile.

It is. I haven't accepted cookies from google in many years, and when I get frustrated enough to !g bang on ddg it never finds me anything better.

Have you used it lately?

It’s on par or better for 99% of what I use it for (tech, real estate, and advocacy).

I have. Also, I just checked my browser history of searches against DDG. I stand by what I said. What they're doing is impressive, but that's not the same thing as saying that they're on the same level of result quality as Google.

I have to use !g a lot because of inferior results from the default search. It can be tough to even get a relevant wikipedia entry to show up in the top 5.

Not really. I usually just add 'wiki' to my query. Or use !w.

I use DDG daily. It's fine for simple, popular, searches (e.g. finding the website of a company by name) but is completely useless for anything even remotely complicated or specialized.

DDG won't even return Stack ("Your question has been deleted as a duplicate") Overflow results for technical questions.

We must be asking very different technical questions, since I get lots of Stack Overflow results on DDG.

I disagree. Google has one strong point, which is "context search". For example, "song with the trumpet intro 90s" or something, will yield crap on DDG and a YouTube link to the song you had in your head on Google.

For any other search term, Google generally spams me with "answer boxes" that are universally slightly besides the point, while DDG gives me a clean page of relevant links.

There's also Bing, which IMO is not that inferior to Google.

Apple Maps was grossly inferior to Google Maps. It still is, but not grossly. Its inferiority didn't stop Apple from forcing it on their users.

Apple owned the outcome of that decision (and thus one of the world's best map services). They don't get that by pointing searches at DDG. In fact, even if they bought DDG, they wouldn't own DDG's search results, because DDG repackages other search engines.

How could they buy DDG ? It serves organic results from Bing.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple acquired DDG.